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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26201431">And Everything In Between</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolf256/pseuds/BadWolf256'>BadWolf256</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Vampire Diaries (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Missing Scene</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:27:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,489</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26201431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolf256/pseuds/BadWolf256</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>On her last night, he comes to her. What could have happened the night before 2x20, if Elijah decided to aid his brother beforehand.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elena Gilbert/Elijah Mikaelson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>And Everything In Between</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">“Where do you want to go?” Asks Elijah. She stares at him like he is brand new - to her, perhaps, he might be, and the thought makes him want to smirk, if the gesture were not so uncouth. There’s something inordinately refreshing about seeing her shocked; he is unused to Petrova’s that are still surprised when vampires come through their windows. Even less so, he thinks, where him and his are concerned. But Elena is not afraid of him. Once she’s gotten over the shock, he knows that she will regain her composure; is already beginning to do so, the tautness of un-expecting muscles rearranging themselves and gearing themselves towards protection. A wise choice, all things considered. She’s never seemed one to be overly suited for strategy, but defense? Elijah appraises her critically, with the same eye that he had been loathe to turn on Katerina. She has a slight frame, and a steady sureness to her gait that would make dodging easy for her, and keep her swift on her feet. Yes, thinks Elijah, she’d be well suited for fighting. <em>Would have been, </em>he thinks, with something akin to a pang, and lets himself brush it aside. He focuses on her galloping heartbeat, and wills as much of a smile as he can let himself to give her to slip its way onto his face as he slides off her window frame and moves to stand in front of her.</p>
<p class="p1">“Why are you here?” Asks Elena. For all that she <em>looks </em>confident, her voice betrays her. The breathiness of it’s too much of a whimper, jarring next to the unwavering caring and loyalty that has granted her his respect. For a moment she looks just like Tatia looked, and though he’s had well over one thousand years to mourn her and her lithe deceptions, he cannot tear her from his thoughts. What kind of a man is he, he wonders, to lead the last descendant of the woman he loved off like a lamb to the slaughter? He had thought, when his brother approached him, that it was too good to be true. Their family, alive. Not thrown in the sea like the corpses of so many others. Their father desiccating inside of a crypt, and their mother - his <em>mother - </em>waiting on the Other Side. He’d thought that it would be easy.</p>
<p class="p1">Now he thinks he might be wrong.</p>
<p class="p1"><em>She does not deserve it, </em>Elijah thinks to himself. He had thought that it would make it better - he is an Original vampire, after all, well seasoned in killing humans, no matter how kind or how righteous - but somehow, it just makes it worse. Standing here, he feels something changing in him. It’s a small change, a slight change, but he is attuned to it. Or perhaps, thinks Elijah - perhaps it changed long ago, when she asked him to keep the ones she loved safe and alive, all too willing, and all too ready, to give up a life of her own. Not for the first time, Elijah wonders, as her breathing goes steady and she shifts like some wounded thing, why she values herself so little. She has a great many admirable qualities; certainly, she possesses the kindness and empathy which both her predecessors lacked. He can see it in her even still - even here, he thinks, as she wrests her way out of the fear inside of her and squares her shoulders to him; as the wind rustles in through her open window and chills her hot, human flesh; as the thrum of her pulse evens out and the blood in her veins makes him yearn to lose his control, as if he could ever afford to. It metastasizes as one wish, one yearning in him.</p>
<p class="p1">He wishes she could have more time.</p>
<p class="p1">He lets his gaze soften towards her, takes note of the moment she sees it. She does not relax to him fully, but the way she had been staring falters, floats to the floor and remains. No, he thinks, that will not do. <em>Why am I here? </em>Thinks Elijah, <em>I’m here to kill you, Elena. To deliver you to Niklaus. </em>Before that, though - before that - they have one whole day to themselves. It has not even started yet.</p>
<p class="p1">“Lovely Elena,” He tells her, stepping yet further into her space, pressing into the first of the emptiness she had left for herself, so that she can <em>feel </em>he is there, “Was my question not clear? You have twenty-four hours,” He tells her, “So where do you want to go?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Anywhere that I want?” Asks Elena. The wary note hasn’t left her. If he were a more honorable man, he’d be saddened for her, or angry. But as she looks deeply up at him, as if she could look straight into his soul with the knowledge that he would not hurt her, the only thing he feels is pride - and, he thinks, an earnest and keen admiration which feels too much out of place. <em>Breathe, </em>Elijah reminds himself, <em>She is only another Petrova. </em>What was it his brother said about them - that they worm their way into men’s hearts and discard them like just one more person to use? It matters not what he thinks of Elena, or what she thinks of him in his stead.</p>
<p class="p1">She is only a girl who will die.</p>
<p class="p1">“Anywhere that you want,” Says Elijah.</p>
<p class="p1">“I want to go to the graveyard,” She says. Anyone else would blink, but Elijah holds his ground firm. Still, it sends his thoughts spinning. He wonders if she knows what images saying that’s conjured; pictures of her with Niklaus’s hand on her neck, his fangs pulling long draws from her as he knees buckle out and her thinning breaths slow to a halt, a note of sweet terror pleading its long way to him. But somehow, he thinks that he knows her. Understands why she wants to go there, if not what it means about her. She wants to be known by the people she’s lost; known as she is in her most brave, fearful hour, and he cannot begrudge her that. He does not offer her words of reassurance; Elijah knows better than to think that’s what she wants from him, when every ounce that he can see is yearning merely to <em>live. </em>She’s well aware of who has come through her window, and that he will not lie to her. Not even, he thinks, to spare her, from truths that are best left unsaid. Instead he holds his hand out to her, and traces a path from her slim collarbone and down over her shivering shoulders.</p>
<p class="p1">“Here,” He says, shucking his jacket off quickly. It isn’t his neatest work, but Elijah thinks it will suffice. “Take mine,” He tells her. She nods a barely-there nod, and accepts the offering gratefully. Devoid of his outermost layer, Elijah can <em>feel </em>the clock ticking on her bedroom wall, suffusing him with a cold, aching dread that even self-distance can’t thaw. Is that what Elena has felt since she learned about the ritual? It paws at him like some evil made true and incarnate, and he is assaulted with a fresh wave of thick, cloying guilt. He pushes it down; suppresses it as much as he can, and holds a hand to her again, letting it hover there. Elena eyes it as if it were open and bleeding, and the sound of her screams as Damon Salvatore forced his to her mouth pound into him out of nowhere. Though he is loathe to admit it, he had wanted to save her from it. She could never survive vampirism, a creature as kind as Elena. There is no greater crime in the world. And he cannot deny how beautiful she looks in it; the dark, stern lines of his suit coat casting their warmth over her. A sorrow comes into him, looking at her, that she’ll die having never loved someone who carried that rich, living warmth.</p>
<p class="p1">“I’m not going to hurt you,” He tells her - and he sees her there, on the threshold of her family’s lake house on a hot sunny day, so afraid and uncertain as her fingers twisted ‘round the gleaming hilt of the dagger. She’d stared at him so fiercely he’d thought she was trying to say something to him. <em>I don’t want to do this, </em>mayhaps. <em>But they won’t give me a choice. </em></p>
<p class="p1">“No,” Says Elena, “Your brother is going to do that.”</p>
<p class="p1">“My brother is going to kill you,” He tells her. “There are far worse things than death.”</p>
<p class="p1">He winces, inside, when he says it - it had not been his intention, but he catches how she blinks back tears as her wild eyes stray to his mouth. If she’d had the life she so sorely deserved, she’d be licking her lips as a burning flush crept up her cheeks, but Elijah knows that she’s seeing his fangs, their sharp metal tips rending unwilling flesh and robbing men of their future, and that is what makes him do it. There is so little space left between them that it’s not a challenge at all; he gets his arms tight around her, tighter than his suit jacket, and hugs her flush to his body. Something feels soft and right to him in it, but still, she is young and unsure. There’s no time for this, thinks Elijah, but Elena is living tonight, and he’ll let her have it, if she feels that it’s what she needs. Soon, though, the dread’s gone too far within him, and he pulls himself back from her.</p>
<p class="p1">“Elena,” He tells her, “I don’t expect you to forgive me, but let me <em>do this </em>for you.”</p>
<p class="p1">“What?” Asks Elena, “Lead me away to my death? You think I don’t know why you’re <em>really </em>here, when Stefan and Damon are gone? It isn’t to give me my last day, Elijah. I can tell you that much.”</p>
<p class="p1">“And yet you do not sound angry,” He tells her, “Why would that be, do you think?”</p>
<p class="p1">It comes out cool and collected, but internally he’s in a maelstrom. Not because she deciphered his true intentions - he’d figured that she would, at some point, and all the better to get it done sooner - but because the resentment is missing. That natural, strong resentment that anybody should rightfully feel when they know that they’re going to die. How long has she <em>lived </em>this way, wonders Elijah, not to feel that, anymore?”</p>
<p class="p1">“There isn’t a reason,” She tells him. She seems to believe, at least, but Elijah is not satisfied. There must be a reason, he thinks to himself, that Elena does not turn to run. He’ll have it from her, by the time that she’s with his brother. Elijah will make sure of that. He sighs, long, into the air.</p>
<p class="p1">“You have never deceived me,” Elijah says, “Even when I desperately wished you were not, you have always been honest with me. So why do you lie to me now?”</p>
<p class="p1">“I’m not a liar,” She tells him, and something in her crystallizes much too headstrong for his liking. “I’m the doppelgänger, Elijah. This is what I was born for.”</p>
<p class="p1">“You weren’t,” Says Elijah, so vehemently that it catches them both off guard. “Forgive me,” He says, “But you were not <em>born </em>to die. Destined, perhaps, but not born.”</p>
<p class="p1">She snorts. She honest to goodness <em>snorts. </em>It raises a low chuckle from him that dies on its way to his lips. What is he <em>doing </em>to her? What is she <em>doing </em>to him? She hasn’t wormed her way in anywhere - he will tell Niklaus that. She merely took full advantage of his proffered invitation; and, despite it all, he finds that he can’t regret it. That he is immensely and agonizingly <em>glad. </em>He lets his slight smile widen a titch. Shows her more of himself than he ever has as he gives her one last chance to hate him. It is only what he deserves. This time, though, it’s Elena who holds out her hand; it shakes, just a bit, in the dim chill of the night, and Elijah does not hesitate. Her fingers in his are just as he’d thought they would be. Trembling and living and fleeting and failing and <em>rare. </em>He wants to hold them forever, so she can know that it will not be all bad - that even when she is no longer living, there will be something worth living for.</p>
<p class="p1">In the end, he does not.</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p3">*</p>
<p class="p4"> </p>
<p class="p1">Elena’s lost too many people.</p>
<p class="p1">He is not new to wandering graveyards at night; his sharp vision picks up the things that a human can’t see, and they trace the names and the numbers of headstones that tell him her parents died young. Had he known she would ask him to come here, he would have bought flowers for them. Something, anything, that she could use in that most mortal of traditions. It is only natural for her to mourn. He supposes that he mourned once, too, in the days when it meant anything. Elena speaks soft words to the family she has outlived - he stands a measure away from her, in the shade of a tall, looming pine, and tries not to eavesdrop on her. It’s quite a fruitless attempt. His hearing is far too acute for his own good, and the hopeless, resigned cadence of her last goodbyes ripple through him like blood tends to do when he feeds. He is taken back to that afternoon, when he leant close to her in the ruins of the old farmhouse and took her scent into his nose. She smells the same now as she did that day, like lavender and spring lilies, tempered by the barest hint of vervain. Elijah remembers it well. The loss of her prevalent fear and the tumbling way of the breeze takes it stronger and farther to him; there’s a given-up taste to it when it sneaks its way through his pursed lips onto his tongue. An anguish and sureness that makes him want to envelop her and give her what they cannot, even if it makes him cruel. He is almost sure he doesn’t hear her when she speaks; wishes that he has not done, because how can he <em>answer </em>her?</p>
<p class="p1">“Who else is going to die?” Asks Elena.</p>
<p class="p1">“No one,” He tells her.</p>
<p class="p1">“Just me,” She muses.</p>
<p class="p1">“Just you.”</p>
<p class="p1">She is knelt in front of her father’s headstone. The gears are spinning in her. Elijah wonders what path she takes when she wanders the rooms of her mind. If she walks long and lonely hallways the way he has for centuries, or if she disguises them all with the words of the men that she loves. He is seized with the sudden urge to force his way in and rip down the curtains; show her how desolate and decrepit her life really is. How little she will be giving up, when she is in Niklaus’s hands. It would go against everything that he is, but he has told worse lies before.</p>
<p class="p1">“What about Stefan and Damon?” She asks him, “What will they do when I’m gone?”</p>
<p class="p1">“I expect that they will leave town,” He tells her, “And seek their fortunes elsewhere.”</p>
<p class="p1">“You don’t seem surprised,” Says Elena.</p>
<p class="p1">“I know you,” He tells her, “Better than you think I do. I’ve been told that I’m very… observant.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Mm,” Elena says, “So?”</p>
<p class="p1">“So?” Asks Elijah.</p>
<p class="p1">“What have you - <em>observed - </em>about me?”</p>
<p class="p1">“You are a very kind person,” He tells her, “Selfish, yes, but all people are. You - You are <em>kind, </em>Elena. When push comes to shove, you put others before yourself, despite the harm it may cause you. And once you have made a decision, you dedicate yourself to it. You aren’t the type of woman who would ever go back on her word.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I daggered you,” She says.</p>
<p class="p1">“And I have forgiven you for it,” He tells her, “Going through with this - it will always be your choice. But I know what it would make of you, and I suspect you know it too.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I know it,” Elena says, tugging his suit jacket closer. He is a briefly envious of it - it’s a poor substitute for real touch, as if he would know about that. If he could be the one giving her comfort, now, when she needs it the most, he would feel that much less like a coward. “That’s the reason I can’t. I know Stefan wants me to. He acts like he doesn’t, but I know that’s what he wants, from me. To spend my - <em>forever - </em>with him.”</p>
<p class="p1">Elena chokes on the word, and it breaks the trance of his restraint. With inhuman speed he is next to her, tucking her sideways into his chest. He’s taken more human contact from her in just a couple of hours than in the last ten years combined, but he finds that he does not quite mind it. She is not in need of his touch, he knows. Just somebody’s touch, one time more, before everything she is ceases.</p>
<p class="p1">“I mean it,” Elena says. “What do you think they’ll do, when they don’t have me, anymore?”</p>
<p class="p1">“You think of it often,” He says. It is not a question, for him. She is Elena Gilbert. Less like a Petrova, he thinks, than any Petrova he’s known. She does not work like Katarina. When she lies awake in the still, darkened hours, she does not think of her own life. She thinks of the lives of the people she loves as they try to move on from her. Will he be one of them, he wonders? He does not let himself reflect on that. He’s spent his whole life attempting to cause her death. It’s been his sole purpose for nearly one thousand years. Niklaus would say it’s a quirk of their evolution, their infallible ability to get at the place in his heart that the armor of coolness can’t shield; the part that is loving and longs. That is the part that Elena wants to protect and defend - the part that is loving and longs. <em>It does not love or long for you, </em>thinks Elijah. He’s adept at this self-deception, but bared to her solemn sorrow, he finds that it is not enough.</p>
<p class="p1">“I think about it all the time,” She admits. Is it the darkness that lets her do that, or the fact that she’s speaking to him? Her heartbeat, it no longer gallops. Her hope, it no longer shines. “I worry about them, Elijah. Stefan and Damon. Jeremy - Jeremy’s just a <em>kid.</em>”</p>
<p class="p1">“So are you,” Says Elijah, “You are still just a child, Elena. I am so -”</p>
<p class="p1">“It won’t make me feel any better,” She tells him, “I would honestly rather you don’t.”</p>
<p class="p1">“They’d be proud of you,” Says Elijah. Faster than he wants to. Sooner than he would say it, if Niklaus had gave him a choice. But fast, so that she has to hear it. Fast so Elena will <em>know. </em>“What should it matter what anyone else thinks of you?”</p>
<p class="p1">“I don’t know,” Elena tells him, “What does it matter to <em>you</em>?”</p>
<p class="p1">“You wanted to come here,” Elijah tells her, “I’m trying to understand why.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Because they’re my parents,” Elena says. “They used to be -”</p>
<p class="p1">“All that you had,” Says Elijah. “Your family. I can sympathize, with that.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Why?” Asks Elena, “Because you’ll have one, once I’m dead? Is that what Klaus offered you?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Elena,” He says - more of a growl than word. The most like a vampire he’s ever sounded to her; he is tempted to show her his fangs, the veins bulging under his eyes. “You would not stand for me insulting your brother. Think <em>carefully </em>about what you’re saying to me.”</p>
<p class="p1">“It won’t change anything,” Says Elena. “I’m going to <em>die </em>tomorrow. I’m actually going to <em>die. </em>And you know what? It’ll be your fault.”</p>
<p class="p1">He’s forgotten how naive she can be. He’s forgotten -</p>
<p class="p1">So many things.</p>
<p class="p1">Underneath it all, Niklaus is still his brother. And Jeremy, still, is Elena’s. Of <em>course </em>she’d do anything for him. Elijah should have known that already. He should’ve known that from the beginning - he tells himself that he had, that it was not wrong of him, using that as a bargaining chip. But what are they bargaining with now? What is he holding for ransom? And what will she hold against him, now that the truth’s catching up and the night has become fading hours? If he told her that he could save her, what would she be willing to pay, and how can he ever refute her? There’s a danger to it that draws him in like a moth is drawn to the flame - but maybe that is just her. The more that he looks at Elena, the less he is able to tell.</p>
<p class="p1">It makes him think of her, though.</p>
<p class="p1">Every time that he’s seen her; not just the first, anymore. Whoever said first impressions were the only things that really mattered was drastically wrong, he thinks. Elena was scared when he met her, a child wearing a necklace. And she may yet be a child, but she is also a soldier, and she has learned to fight already. She did not <em>need </em>him to teach her. The Salvatores and the Council - even the brother he fights to hate and not love - took that task up in his stead. They have done a good job of it, he thinks. They’ve got to the root of Elena; they have transformed the very girl that she was into someone who views herself solely as some kind of chess piece. It’s been decades since he has cried, but it is nearly enough to make him. <em>You did it yourself, </em>thinks Elijah, as he takes in Elena’s whole form. She looks like Katarina could have looked. Like he’d thought that Tatia did, once. But she is somehow more pretty than either of them, and he gets an itch in his fingers to reach out and touch her, the way that an old lover might. He is not her old lover, and never could be. She won’t get that much time in this world.</p>
<p class="p1">And he sees every year that she might have lived wilt in front of him the very same way flowers do; never losing their beauty, their strength, only ever not being alive. In a circle of fire, the doppelgänger will surrender. His brother will sink his fangs into her and drain her of all that she is. And when she chooses to leave them - because she <em>will </em>choose to leave them, could not bear committing the crime - her flesh and her bones and the blood that is no longer in her will return, someday, to the Earth. Damon Salvatore will rip brunette women apart and leave their corpses in the street; Stefan will disappear. And Elijah, too, will return. He will return to New Orleans, the city he lived in and loved as he once could have loved Elena, if only they’d had their chance. He will find his old allies and drown himself in new purpose; the walls that the guilt of his killing her tore away will build themselves back twice as solid, so that when he comes back to Mystic Falls, in a future too distant to name, he will return twice as deadly. Twice as devoid of emotion, and half as brave as Elena is being, on this night that it is her last. Her very last night in the world, thinks Elijah - who brought this hell onto her? When they died, was it as horrific as her death will be?</p>
<p class="p1">It occurs to him, as Elena begins to cry, that he shouldn’t ask questions whose answers he already knows. Should not contemplate what cannot be. He wonders what Niklaus would have said, if he had told him the truth. He does not love her - it cannot be called love, exactly - but Elijah knows he’d have grown too, in some hopeful and different world. Elena would go to college. Her blood would sing bright in her body. Her fierce, joyous smile would glimmer like foam on the crest of a wave. He would hear her voice every morning inside of his head, and he would not have to run away from it with alcohol and cigarettes and <em>being </em>a Mikaelson, because she would <em>be </em>there, with him. If they lived in some hopeful and different world, she would find some way to leave them, those men that she loves, before they led her to her doom.</p>
<p class="p1">But they do not live in that world, thinks Elijah.</p>
<p class="p1">Elena Gilbert is right. He could say whatever he likes to her; it will not change anything. She is going to die tomorrow, and though he would not dare say it out loud, a part of himself will die with her. The biggest, most true part of him. The part that is loving and longs; longs, into the vastness of everything he has seen, and all the men he has killed, for somebody to hold his hand, clutch him tightly to them in the long nights. He had considered what they could have, once, when she promised him she would come back to him. He had watched as she kept that promise. It had slammed into him like a freight train as she’d stabbed herself with the dagger, so penitent in advance that he’d been unable to loathe her for it, even though he should have done. She is no Tatia Petrova, no Katarina in truth. She is merely Elena, and, all too soon, she will not be. He can hear what she would tell him, if he were to look into her eyes right now - but then, she <em>is </em>telling him, and he prays that he only imagines the begging tone of her voice.</p>
<p class="p1">“It’s never too late to switch sides,” Says Elena.</p>
<p class="p1">“Did your mother teach that to you?”</p>
<p class="p1">“I taught myself,” Says Elena. “Somebody had to, you know?”</p>
<p class="p1"><em>Yes, sweet Elena. I know. </em>What good would saying it do? Saying it will not save her. Neither, he thinks, will kneeling here with him, so near to her parents graves; so why on Earth does she do it? Why does she not <em>flee </em>from him like the predator that he is? Her compassion will be the death of her, surely. Surely, it cannot be him. But if it is him - and both of them know that it will be - Elijah will never forgive himself for it, not for as long as he lives. And he feels in his heart that that shall be his punishment. Without the threat of her bloodline making Niklaus stab him, he will live for a very long time.</p>
<p class="p1">“I remember the day that they died,” Says Elena. “Do you know what I see, when I close my eyes? I see them drowning, Elijah. I see Stefan saving me first. It shouldn’t have been me,” She tells him, and he knows that she thinks it is true.</p>
<p class="p1">“Elena,” He tells her - his shirt is wet with her tears, and his jacket is still swamping here, “You mustn’t say such things.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Why?” Asks Elena, “Why shouldn’t I? If there wasn’t a doppelgänger -”</p>
<p class="p1">“Niklaus’s wrath would be scathing. He’d have come here and slaughtered anyone who had known you. No one you loved would have been spared.”</p>
<p class="p1">“But they would have been able to grieve for me,” Says Elena, “Without having to feel like -”</p>
<p class="p1">“Please,” Says Elijah. It comes without his meaning it to. But Elena- she has gone silent. And Elijah feels time like he’s never felt time; feels all that he stands to lose in the shape of a slim human girl; the long, chocolate sweep of her hair tousled by the nighttime wind and the strain of the inevitable, cheeks marred by silvery tear trails. He finds himself echoing what he has told her already - but it is much different, now, as he traces a path down her face, blush rising on her sweet skin. “Let me do this for you.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Elijah,” She tells him, “I can’t -”</p>
<p class="p1">“Hush,” He says, “You can do whatever you’d like. Whatever you want to, you can.”</p>
<p class="p1"><em>Except, </em>he thinks, <em>Stay with me. </em>The part of him that is loving and longs, it opens itself up to her. And Elijah waits, thumb swiping the salt from her skin, for Elena to open up likewise. The year has made her too wary. Too closed to things being alright. But they are not, they are not alright. He feels like a young man, again, like he’d lay down his life to do right by her, for once. It is more than his soul can handle, and so he shifts them, so that they face one another. Now Elena does look in his eyes; can see what he has been hiding in them - that, though he has tried to disguise it, to cast it out of his heart, he cares for her ever so deeply. That, ever so needing, he <em>yearns. </em></p>
<p class="p1">“Elijah,” She says. It is more of a whisper, this time. “Tell me what I should do.”</p>
<p class="p1">“What you should do?” Asks Elijah. To himself, first and foremost, because she does not mean tonight. She does not mean here, in his arms. She means when she gasps awake on a cold metal table, her limbs sore and stiff, her clammy gums <em>aching </em>for blood. She means tomorrow, when she will go off with Stefan into the forest somewhere and pretend there has been no tonight; that this one, holy moment of being what they could have been does not matter to her at all, “Is trust me.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Trust you,” She says. Rolls it through her white teeth. The sound of her bursts like fireworks in the air. It is hoarse and frightened and vulnerable, but there is that trust in it; and the gaze that Elena turns up at him, that springs forth from her lingering resolve, tells him what she cannot.</p>
<p class="p1">“I have never broken my word to you,” He says. All the things that he wanted to do - he will let himself do them, now. It’s impossible to resist when her heat soaks through his jacket, and over, and far into him. She is much more lovely than anything else in the world - for this one night, as her pulse starts to thrum like the chords of a ballad, some sublime ballad that flays with the weight of love lost, he will let himself make a new promise.</p>
<p class="p1">And when it is over, he’ll sit with her, and watch the sun rise over bleaching bones, his hand caught in hers and the taste of his whiskey trapped inside her like a hummingbird locked in a cage. They will be anyone; any two people who know what they’re going to lose. But there will not be any tears in them. No hatred and no resentment. There will be only a sadness that leaches away with the slight, glancing strength of the places where their skin is yet touching. There will be only the future that the cannot have; and, as he sits there, suffused in knowing the woman that he could have loved, Elijah will finger the hem of his suit coat, still so pretty on her, and speak to the trees and the dawn. <em>I will never forget you, </em>Elijah will say. She will stand and take a step back from him - to be her own person again, a girl who is ready to die. Elena will tell him, <em>You should. </em>And that is the problem with it, he thinks. He has gotten so lost in the should and should not that he hasn’t kissed her at all. His hands are not tangled up in her hair the way that he’s learned women like. The vision breathing inside of him crumbles as she slips out of his arms; crouches, once more, towards her long-buried past. Straightens in tandem with him. Toes at the ground with her shoes.</p>
<p class="p1">Her hands fall into the pockets of his suit jacket. She looks ridiculous in it, like a girl playing dress up in her mother’s clothes that are at least ten sizes too big. Elijah thinks of his own mother, now, pulling him along the coast of a country that had not a name, her love for them too big to allow her a conscience. There was a song that she used to sing, when he and his siblings were very young and had trouble getting to sleep. When they loved each other, and were whole. The words come to him through the soon-to-be mist of a burgeoning, tangerine dawn. </p>
<p class="p1">“I didn’t know you could sing,” Says Elena.</p>
<p class="p1">And he tells her,</p>
<p class="p1">“Neither did I.”</p>
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